


Faults and Hairline Fractures

by bitochondria



Category: Miami Vice (TV)
Genre: (the injury is NOT during the sex), Ambiguous Orientation Rico Tubbs, Angst, Angst and Porn, Bisexual Sonny Crockett, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Behavior, Canonical Character Death, Crying, Episode: s03e12 Down for the Count, Episode: s03e16 Theresa, Friends With Benefits, Guilt, Hand Jobs, Jealousy, Kissing, M/M, On-Again/Off-Again Relationship, Oral Sex, POV Third Person Limited, Period Typical Attitudes, Porn with Feelings, Possibly Unrequited Feelings, Reasonably Canon Compliant, Sonny is super not okay about Zito, Spoilers, Tubbs finds himself feeling a bit more than casual about Sonny, but this deals with the fallout, the "major character death" isn't really in the fic it's part of the series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:15:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27623929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitochondria/pseuds/bitochondria
Summary: Invited to stay the night on the St. Vitus for the first time in a long time, Tubbs thinks seriously on his arrangement with Crockett and why he's been so tongue-tied recently. Sonny, feigning normalcy after the death of one of their squad mates, reacts explosively to a minor household accident. They find themselves pressed together in the dark, wordless and hot, but that doesn't make what they have a relationship.
Relationships: Sonny Crockett/Ricardo Tubbs
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13





	Faults and Hairline Fractures

“I’ll tell you, Rico,” Sonny sighed, elbows on a long white rail overlooking the sea, “If more nights were like tonight, I think you’n me would be out of a job.” His head swept in an arc, from over his shoulder, smiling at Tubbs, then across the dusk-pink sand, and finally to the sun setting in the far distance over the ocean.

Today had been another ‘up’ day. 

Sonny had had a lot of ‘up’ days recently, which was frankly more concerning than the fog of malaise he had been in for months before; after all, Zito had been in the ground less than a week. 

Tubbs sidled up against him on the railing, not touching, and poured one shot of his colada into a tiny cup for Sonny, and then one for himself. Even just a few months ago, his response to a statement like that might have been to rib Sonny a little— elbow him in the side and ask what had put him in such a cheery mood. But now, Tubbs stayed quiet, locking his gaze in parallel with his partner’s. If he brought any attention to his contentment, it was likely to dissolve under his questioning like a sugarcube under a waterfall.

It  _ was _ a beautiful sunset. Maybe not crime-stoppingly beautiful, but he wasn’t going to begrudge Sonny a rare moment of optimism. 

So he just smiled and looked down at his drink.

Sonny brought the little paper cup to his lips. As he sipped, his brows raised. 

“This is good,” he nodded, looking at the cafecito appraisingly. “Not as good as Oscar’s, but  _ way _ better than the place we were at on Biscayne yesterday.” 

“Sonny,” Tubbs snorted, “your sandwich had  _ grey _ meat in it. I don’t think the coffee was the biggest problem there.”

“Meat’s grey sometimes,” Sonny shrugged. “I didn’t get food poisoning.” 

“You ate like three bites of it,” Tubbs laughed, briefly, before his laughter caught in his throat. Sonny hadn’t eaten much more than three bites of  _ anything _ the past few months. He’d order a sandwich and eat half, or just get coffee, or pick at some french fries before declaring himself full. He had never been a particularly enthusiastic diner, but getting anything more caloric than orange juice into his mouth had become… a  _ challenge _ , as of late. Tubbs bit the inside of his lip, hoping Sonny wouldn’t notice his worry. 

Sonny barely glanced at him, gulping down his espresso like it was water. He held his cup out for another pour, and Tubbs obliged.

“What’s the equivalent, for you?” Sonny looked at Tubbs over his shoulder. “Piece of broccoli looked at me funny?”

Tubbs let one eyelid fall half shut and glared. “Grey  _ anything _ does not belong in one’s mouth, animal or vegetable."

The orange dusk made Sonny’s eyelashes look like gold dust. He grinned at Tubbs, awash in sherbert light, his eyes soft. The past few months were easy to put aside when he smiled like that. 

“You wanna get dinner and head back to my place?” 

The set of his eyebrows made it clear this was not an invitation to come play cards.

Tubbs nodded. He tried not to look too surprised, or too pleased. It had been a while.

A parade of suddenly-serious girlfriends had taken up a lot of Sonny’s free time for the better part of the fall; each one presented like a marriage candidate, each one sticking around for less than two or three weeks. It’s not like they had dissolved their friendly arrangement entirely, but Tubbs didn’t find himself waking up on the  _ Dance _ quite as often as he had last year. 

After what had happened with Calderone’s son and… well, what had happened last spring— not that Tubbs could really bring himself to think through the specifics— he and Sonny had practically moved in together. The whole summer had been a heady blur of ‘your place or mine?,’ of cold drinks pressed to cheeks and foreheads over sweat-drenched sheets, of mornings spent arguing about who was going to make coffee, and nights spent laughing and talking about anything other than the nature of what they were doing. One night, in the dark of Tubbs’ bedroom, Sonny had gone to light a cigarette, and Tubbs had asked if he might be willing to avoid smoking inside his apartment. Tubbs hadn’t seen him touch a cigarette since. Another day, Tubbs had casually mentioned how well the Mets were doing and how he had been trying to catch their games, and then suddenly Sonny owned a television. 

It had been nice. 

Too nice, really— outside the bounds of their agreement, and destined for some kind of reckoning. That the reckoning had come in the form of cupcakes, however, had been a bit of a surprise.

There had been a couple of times Tubbs had thought their arrangement would necessitate a sudden and awkward dissolution— the night Castillo had called Tubbs’ apartment, annoyance roiling just beneath a neutral tone, and asked if he had any idea where Crockett was, because no one had been picking up at the boat or on the car phone for hours. Tubbs had glanced at Sonny, in briefs in his kitchen, fixing himself a bowl of cereal, and told Castillo he would ask around with Sonny’s girlfriends. When he had told Sonny, he had turned the same color as the milk in his bowl.

Or the time when Gina had come by the  _ Dance _ early one morning to give Sonny a file, and Tubbs had had to scramble into the unused bow bedroom and hide. He had heard Gina ask, totally innocently, “Is Rico here?”

The panic in Sonny’s voice had been audible even from behind closed doors. “No… why would he be?” For an undercover agent, he could be a spectacularly bad actor sometimes.

“Well, his car’s outside.” Something had shifted in Gina’s voice. “I just thought I could talk to both of you about what we pulled if he’s here.”

“Oh!” Sonny had sputtered, totally unconvincing. “He couldn’t get his car to start last night, so I let him take the Daytona home.”

If she had been to the precinct earlier, she had probably seen the Daytona parked in the back lot. 

Tubbs had felt— or imagined— Gina’s eyes on him for the rest of the day. 

Even the time they had run into Trudy and a new boyfriend at a white-tablecloth restaurant one evening, and she had jokingly suggested a “double date” hadn’t  _ quite  _ scared them into calling it off. 

So it hadn’t  _ really  _ been the cupcakes that did them in. But they were the last straw.

A little more than halfway through September, giggling like the precinct was full of nitrous, Switek and Zito had plopped two enormous pink-frosted cupcakes, replete with heart-shaped sprinkles, on both Sonny and Tubbs’ desks. 

“Happy second anniversary,” Switek had snorted, unable to keep a straight face for even a fraction of a second. 

With a gravity undermined by a persistent upward twitch of the corners of his mouth, Zito had added, “Stan here didn’t think Crockett was actually capable of monogamy, but I always had faith in you.”

“This is…” Switek hadn’t been able to finish his sentence without chuckling. For a moment, he had reminded Tubbs of that asshole dog from  _ Wacky Races _ , and he had found himself biting the inside of his lip to keep from joining in his laughter. Switek had looked at Sonny, grinning. “This is supposed to be the cotton anniversary, but,” he choked on his own laughter, “I know you only wear polyester, so…” 

Simultaneously, they had responded: Sonny rolled his eyes and leaned back heavy in his chair, arms crossed. “ _ Very  _ funny,” he had sighed. “Rich coming from you two knuckleheads— you common-law married yet?” 

At the same time, Tubbs had raised his cupcake in a toast. Knowing this had little to do with Sonny or their partnership, and everything to do with the fact that it was  _ actually _ the two-year anniversary of him officially joining Vice Squad, he had simply said, “Thanks, man.” Zito had shot him an honest smile, and Switek had punched him in the shoulder. 

Tubbs had peeled the wrapper off and eaten his cake— it was awful, one of those supermarket cupcakes with frosting that tasted like Crisco and cavities— and Sonny had left his untouched. 

Their little joke hadn’t been any worse than any of the  _ thousands _ of things Sonny had implied about Switek and Zito’s partnership over the years, but for the rest of the day Sonny had been distant and touchy. Not long after, in concert with the procession of serious new girlfriends, a procession of loss and failure also followed— Stone, Frank and Tico, Archie, the whole damn mess with Gilmore— and Sonny’s personal ice age seemed to set in for good. Their friendship didn’t really suffer, not exactly, and they even still ended up in bed occasionally, although Sonny rarely stayed the night anymore. But whatever had been happening over the summer stopped happening, and Tubbs, who had never been able to keep his eyes off Sonny, found he was now watching mostly to make sure he didn’t collapse. Even his own issues felt like Sonny’s issues— he got yelled at for going undercover in prison, because it made Sonny nervous— he got yelled at for being suspicious of his old partner, because it made Sonny feel guilty— hell, he got yelled at for trying to explain to Sonny why he was  _ scared for him _ when he started method-acting cat burglary like a damn headcase. 

And now, with what had happened with Hackman, and then Zito’s death, Tubbs had been bracing himself for a total meltdown. Instead, Crockett had been all smiles and go-getter attitude. It wasn’t better. Sometimes it felt more like he was talking to Burnett than his partner.

“What’re you up for, pizza, Chinese?” Sonny grinned. “Cocktails?”

“Food before booze, partner,” Tubbs laughed. “But whatever you want is fine with me.”

Sonny squinted out over the ocean. “I’m feeling a real yen for meatballs coming on, I think. Italian okay?”

Tubbs nodded, silently, without much enthusiasm, and then realized what was causing him reticence on the topic of Italian. “Long as it’s not the place where we busted that speed dealer a few weeks ago. Did you count the number of pigeons in the kitchen?” 

He wondered if Sonny had noticed his quiet.

Or perhaps, more specifically, he wondered if Sonny had noticed how quiet he had been, in general, recently.

“I got to four before I decided four was already too many.” 

“There were seven. I asked one of the line cooks there and he said one of the dishwashers had started feeding them out the back door, and now they can’t get rid of them.”

“What, do the pigeons have lawyers or something? Squatters’ rights?” 

“Yeah,” Tubbs grinned, peeking at Sonny from the corners of his eyes, “you didn’t see the one with a little tie and a briefcase?”

Sonny snickered, mouth full of coffee.

“You know, I knew a guy once who had a monkey with a tie and a briefcase.” 

“For real?” Tubbs squinted. “...why?”

“Well, it was at a used car dealership, and the monkey was kind of the mascot—”

“No, I know why people do stupid shit with monkeys, I mean, why did you know this guy?”

“Oh,” Sonny blinked, recentering his thinking on the topic. He looked down at his empty cup and pushed off the railing. “He was an occasional informant. The monkey was actually my leverage— he did  _ not _ have the appropriate permits.” 

Tubbs drained the last of his own cafecito and asked, “What happened to this guy?” 

As soon as he asked, his palms went clammy. What if the monkey guy was just another tragic death in the long and storied history of tragic deaths Sonny had been witness to? 

Shoving one hand in his pocket, Sonny scanned the area for a trash bin. “Well, Chester— uh, that was the monkey— bit Pinky— the informant— on the thigh and we had to negotiate with Animal Control to get Chester rehomed. He still lives at the Monkey Jungle— doesn’t bite people now that he doesn’t have to wear a tie.” Sonny tossed his cup out. “Just like me.” 

Tubbs followed behind, disposing of his own empty cups. “And the informant…?” 

“He retired,” Sonny shrugged. “Last I heard he had remarried and moved to Naples.” 

A sense of relief washed over Tubbs as they made their way back to the Testarossa. It was a pleasant surprise when Sonny’s old friends and acquaintances were still kicking and not in jail or shattered by trauma. The relief passed as soon as Sonny started the engine; Tubbs didn’t  _ hate _ the new Ferrari, but he did hate the way it made Sonny drive.

“Emilio’s has that eggplant thing you like, right? Or is it uh, the place with the Christmas tree they never take down?” Sonny shot out onto the road before Tubbs had a chance to even reach for the seatbelt. Although the law had been passed nearly a year ago, Sonny still couldn’t quite get it through his head that ‘mandatory’ meant him, too. Tubbs pretended he was setting a good example as an officer of the law, but in actuality, he expected one of them was going to end up going through the Testarossa’s windshield before the decade was out, and it wasn’t going to be him.

Ignoring the sudden acceleration, he played along. Sonny liked to pretend he was too much of an asshole (or too disinterested, or too cool, or perhaps just too straight) to remember anything about Tubbs’ personal preferences, despite mysteriously being able to remember minute details from every case he had ever worked. Equally mysterious, his memory also worked perfectly fine when Tubbs wasn’t around to ‘correct’ him. 

“Sonny, sometimes I wonder if you got knocked on the head one too many times playing football,” he sighed. He knew Sonny already knew what he was about to say, because they weren’t even heading in the general direction of Emilio’s. “Emilio’s is the one where the vegetarian platter comes with a side of chicken fingers.” 

“Oh,  _ shit _ ,” he lied. “So it is the Christmas tree place.” He grinned at Tubbs over his shoulder, taking his eyes off the road for far longer than was sensible considering their rate of travel. “They kept  _ telling _ me I should wear a helmet, but I hated what it did to my hair, y’know?”

Tubbs snorted, picturing a teenage Sonny furiously combing on the sidelines. 

Sonny sighed, posture loose with one hand out the window, sunglasses glowing orange from the setting sun. “What do I usually get from the Christmas tree place, then?”

“I thought you said you wanted meatballs.”

The corner of Sonny’s mouth twitched. “Jesus, I really am losing my memory.”

Tubbs chanced a softball reference to the events of the past week. “We’ve all got a lot on our minds, Sonny.”

He didn’t respond, but he didn’t dismiss him outright, either. Out the window, he spread the fingers of his left hand wide against the humid evening air, and then pulled them together like he was grasping the tail of a breeze. He pursed his lips slightly. 

Without signalling, he switched lanes. 

“Could you believe that kid with the dogs this afternoon?” Sonny’s voice went kind of tight— high and a little nasal— and he smiled that insincere grin, the one that came with a tilt of the head and a mouthful of exposed teeth. Tubbs couldn’t quite put his finger on when that had stopped being a purely Burnett affectation and started being a Crockett deflection, but every time he did it, Tubbs felt something in his ribs tighten. 

“After she brought out the sixteenth damn weimaraner I was half expecting a horse and a cow to be next,” Sonny laughed.

There had not literally been sixteen weimaraners, but there had been a wide assortment of reasonably friendly second-hand canines being passed off as ‘pedigreed.’ The girl who had been forging American Kennel Club documents— not the crime they had been investigating, not by a long shot— was fifteen and talked like a used car salesman. When she had offered to provide them with information on her gun-smuggling neighbors in exchange for overlooking her cottage pooch rehoming operation, Sonny had muttered that they had found ‘a baby Izzy.’ 

“You think Elvis could get along with a dog?” Tubbs grinned. “‘Cause she was offering some good deals.” 

“I think she would have printed me a pedigree  _ for _ Elvis if I had asked nice enough.” Sonny snorted. “I mean— thank god she’s just selling pets and not making passports or counterfeit cash.”

“That we know of,” Tubbs pointed out, thinking about the array of clearly-stolen printers in their teen entrepreneur’s living room. “I think a teenager with enough computer know-how could probably defraud the feds at this point.”

“Makes me feel  _ old _ ,” Sonny sighed. “I don’t even know how to work a Nintendo, y’know?”

“Who are you trying to impress playing Mario Brothers, man? You gonna become a youth resource officer?”

Sonny’s mouth curled up on one side, exposing his eyeteeth. A real smile, crooked and charming, this time. 

“Yeah, why the hell not. I’m eventually going to be too old and uncool to pass as a drug dealer, right, might as well have a backup plan.”

“Oh yeah, kids love old washed up drug dealers,” Tubbs nodded, trying not to crack a smile. 

Sonny shot him a dirty look that was readable even through his sunglasses, but he couldn’t wipe the smirk from his face. “Hey, pal, you’re gonna be a washed up old drug dealer someday, too, y’know.”

Tubbs shook his head. “Sorry, man, but black folk age like wine.” He winked at Sonny, who immediately choked back laughter. “I plan on skipping  _ old _ and going right to silver fox, you got me?” 

“I see, I see,” Sonny chuckled, “All this clean living bullshit’s just so you’re still cute when they put you in a home, huh.” He crossed all the way from the middle lane to the exit, left hand moving to the wheel, right on the gear stick.

As they spoke on the subject of aging, it was difficult not to think about how Sonny’s complete disregard for traffic laws might become a significant issue in a few years, depending on the Crockett family history of vision loss. Tubbs couldn’t really picture Sonny consenting to corrective lenses. 

With the right haircut, and maybe a tie, though, he could kind of picture the Sonny-from-another-universe who  _ might _ wear glasses. Sort of Harrison Ford playing the professor version of Indy in  _ Raiders _ , but with prettier eyelashes. 

Tubbs swept over Sonny with his eyes, silently, in the growing dark.

“You ever thought about wearing glasses?”

One eyebrow shot up. “No, why? Was that last bump a pedestrian?” 

Tubbs shook his head, chuckling. “Just thinking about being old, man.” 

Immediately it was clear that the topic of age— and of course, by association, death and survival— was a heavy misstep. A reminder that making it to old age wasn't a guarantee for so many whose lives were entangled with theirs, on both sides of the law. Sometimes, Tubbs wondered if Sonny counted himself in that number. 

After a period of still, humid quiet, Sonny glanced at Tubbs, then back to the road, and then back at Tubbs, all in the span of about half a second. 

“You know, you’re kinda cute in glasses, actually.” Sonny pursed his lips as he removed his sunglasses, slipping them into his breast pocket. “Like a sexy political science professor, or something.”

Tubbs snorted. It was nice to know that, despite whatever had been going on with Sonny the past few months, they were often still on the same page. 

“Why political science?”

The Testarossa slid into a space in the back of the parking lot of the Italian restaurant with the ever-present Christmas tree.  _ La Famiglia Nicoletta _ , Tubbs was reminded, although the neon in their sign had run out in the final  _ -tta _ long before Tubbs had come to Miami.

Sonny theatrically bopped his palm on his forehead and sighed. “How do I always forget— St. Nick’s.” He swung his legs out the door of the car. 

“Gotta get you involved in one of those Instrumental Enrichment programs,” Tubbs suggested, smirking as he removed himself from the vehicle. 

“What, is that like Dianetics?” 

Tubbs’ eyes closed and a throaty cough of laughter escaped. Sonny was grimacing, but there was a twinkle in his eye. 

He smacked Sonny on the arm and pushed him towards the restaurant. 

Seated at the counter, waiting for their food, Tubbs faced the door and Sonny faced the kitchen, elbows on the formica. Tubbs tilted toward Sonny, shoulders touching, ear to ear but not face to face. 

“You never answered me. Why political science?”

Sonny had picked up a toothpick when they walked in, and it twitched upwards in his teeth as he grinned. Crinkles formed at the corners of his eyes. 

“I dunno, I can just see you trying to explain the Nicaraguan Revolution to a bunch of moony-eyed nineteen year olds who only took your class ‘cause they wanted to look at you,” he chuckled. His eyes were soft and his cheeks were dimpled as he looked down at the countertop, faded red. 

“ _ Thanks _ ,” Tubbs laughed, trying to still the fuzzy vibration in his chest. 

Most of the time, it didn’t require a lot of brain power to remember that their  _ circumstances _ were not, in fact, romantic, but sometimes when Sonny smiled like that, earnest and a little shy, Tubbs’ memory got a little faulty. 

There’d be a hurt, a tug like a fishhook caught under his ribs, and a voice in the back of his head that whispered,  _ “well… why not?” _

He swatted the feeling away with an admonition.

“Love that I’m only good for my looks,” he sighed, crossing his arms. He leaned back against the counter as Sonny leaned forward onto his elbows. 

Sonny shifted his toothpick to the corner of his mouth. “Nah. You’re great at your imaginary professor job, you’re just popular for the wrong reasons.”

Tubbs had a rebuttal, but he was interrupted by Frankie Nicoletta Jr. with an order of meatballs and eggplant rollatini. 

The Testarossa smelled like a trattoria. Tubbs found his stomach growling, audibly, as they drove back to the  _ St. Vitus _ . Sonny ribbed him for it, asking if he needed a pre-dinner snack or a personal assistant to help him remember to eat lunch, until his own stomach made a noise like it was eating itself. 

Nonetheless, Sonny suggested actual plates, and they sat down at his tiny kitchen table like actual adults. Tubbs found himself too busy wolfing down his food to think about whether this was some sad attempt at normalcy, or whether the plates were only loaded with Italian food and not subtext. After dinner, Sonny disappeared into the bedroom with a promise to be right back, and Tubbs moved the dishes to the sink. He contemplated washing them, but didn’t want to be elbow deep in soapy water and tomato sauce if Sonny returned feeling frisky. He made his way to the couch, and glanced at Sonny’s bookshelf. 

He wondered if other people noticed that the titles changed, not infrequently. Where the new books came from was a mystery; even knowing his partner’s secret fondness for reading, Tubbs couldn’t quite picture Sonny at the library. A second-hand store somewhere, most likely. He was probably friendly with the owner— Tubbs immediately pictured him turning the charm on for a middle-aged woman with a short haircut and her glasses on a chain as he picked up a random assortment of paperbacks from the 50 cent bin. He smiled, down, looking at his knees, feeling his eyes go soft. 

Over the back of the couch, Sonny leaned in and kissed the side of Tubbs’ neck. Tubbs turned so their noses were touching, and Sonny brushed his lips very softly against the corner of his mouth. 

Something deep in Tubbs’ guts, in the viscera between lungs and stomach, heaved. With it came a whisper:  _ you know you’re being used, right? _

Tubbs brushed hair off Sonny’s forehead with this thumb. He wished he would let it grow out again. 

Sonny smelled like mint. Tubbs had never specifically asked him to do it, but he would usually slip away to brush his teeth between eating meat and any sort of mouth-to-mouth action.

He tilted his head and pressed his lips to Sonny’s. 

He reminded himself that their agreement was purely casual, and that if Sonny only wanted to have sex when it suited him— only when he needed his mind taken off something— that was his prerogative. And it wasn’t like he was any better. Hell, their summer fling had started because of— when he had been— after they— after… following… their _ failure to arrest _ Orlando Calderone. 

They weren’t boyfriends. No one was being  _ used _ just because Sonny wasn’t available to him at his convenience. 

Sonny rounded the couch and took Tubbs’ face in his hand. He stayed standing, legs wide, between Tubbs and the tiny living room table, and just looked him in the eye.

It couldn’t have been more than a second, but in the time their eyes met, Tubbs felt like he traversed the entire spectrum of human emotion. He worried about everything Sonny was pretending he didn’t feel. He wanted to touch him. He wondered if he should be here at all. He wished this all still felt like it did last year, when it was easy and light and fun and… 

And in a blink, something in Sonny’s jaw tightened, and he looked imperceptibly off to the side. Tubbs found his eyes on Sonny’s collar instead of his face.

Sonny ran his hand down Tubbs’ face to his neck and his top button, already unbuttoned, as he dropped to his knees in front of him. He raised his eyebrows and undid the next button down.

“So, professor,” he smirked, “Tell me about the future of the Eastern Bloc.” He continued unbuttoning Tubbs’ buttons. 

“Are you into roleplaying, now?” Tubbs snorted. He couldn’t help but laugh at the idea of Sonny playing a naughty coed. 

“Nah, just into making you laugh.” Sonny grinned, and Tubbs laughed harder.

“Good,” Tubbs chuckled, shimmying out of his pants, “‘Cause I think I need a refresher on geopolitics if I’m going to commit to the role.” 

Sonny, pulling from the pockets, brought Tubbs’ slacks down past his knees and let them fall to the floor. “Oh, yeah. You can’t do  _ Sexy Professor Punishes his Naughty Student _ without a solid understanding of glasnost and perestroika, am I right?” 

Tubbs’ laughter began anew as Sonny tugged the waistband of his underwear. He lifted his butt and let Sonny tug them free, joining his pants around his ankles.

“‘But professor,’” Sonny protested, his voice a little high. He palmed Tubbs’ dick as he spoke, eyes all mischief. “‘Don’t you want to spank me? Tell me I’ve been bad?’ ‘No, no,’” he growled, dropping an octave, “‘I just want you to work through this article on the Brezhnev doctrine with me.’” 

One hand over his mouth, Tubbs found himself choking back laughter, trying to reconcile Sonny’s extremely unsexy comedy routine with his steady hand wrapped around his growing erection. 

“Y’know, it’s kind of weird that you’re getting off to this, man.” 

His face inches away from Tubbs’ cock, Sonny glittered. He was like the damn alligator from  _ Peter Pan _ with that grin. 

“Is it the politics, or… god, Rico, it’s not the voices is it?” His pace was deliberate and restrained, his eye contact laser-targeted. “Maybe I’m totally off— you’re turned on by Russian.” 

Tubbs bit the inside of his lip, trying not to laugh or, god forbid, to make any kind of appreciative noise as Sonny monologued. He would never hear the end of it.

Sonny leaned in and licked the tip of his cock, his hand still moving smoothly, slowly, firmly, up and down the shaft. He never broke eye contact. Tubbs’ laughter subsided quite suddenly.

“I only know a few more words, if that’s what gets you going. Borscht.” He glanced upwards, as if trying to retrieve vocabulary from the air. The way he licked his lips as he did it made it very clear practicing his Russian was not high on his list of goals. “Blintz. Vodka.”

An unwanted and involuntary laugh issued forth at that one.

“Pierogi?” Sonyn blinked. “Or is it pirogshi—piroshki, if it’s—”

“Sonny,” Tubbs wheezed, pressing his fingertips into his eyes, cheeks hurting from smiling too much, “will you shut the fuck up about the Soviet Union?” 

Sonny pouted, oozing false exasperation. “Well where’s the fun in that, partner?” 

He winked, adorable and aggravating in equal measure. Tubbs reached out and ran his fingers through his partner’s hair. 

Sonny blinked at him, eyes and smile like lamb’s ear. And then his mouth was on Tubbs’ cock, and it was just as soft and twice as hot. Tubbs’ fingers tightened in his shorn scruff, still enough to grab even trim and spikey. Sonny was almost aggressive in his motions, his head bobbing hungrily to an internal rhythm, his teeth incautiously grazing Tubbs’ skin. It wasn’t  _ exactly _ desperation, the thrum of need pulsating just underneath Sonny’s skin, but it wasn’t far off, either.

With one hand on Tubbs’ waist as he sucked, Tubbs could feel Sonny’s thumb pressing harder into his hipbone as he started to push against Sonny’s mouth. His grip on Sonny’s head increased, and a soft sound of satisfaction vibrated against Tubbs’ cock. Tubbs ground hard against Sonny, Sonny’s tongue running patterns on the underside of his length. 

He had hoped that they might make a longer night of it, but Sonny’s enthusiasm was limiting the likelihood of that outcome. 

With the hand that had been resting on Tubbs’ thigh, Sonny unzipped his own pants and pulled his underwear down just enough to free his own dick. He palmed himself roughly, in time with the movement of his mouth.

He’d never said it aloud— wouldn’t call the guy out like that— but Tubbs loved how hot and bothered Sonny got giving head. 

His whole body flushed a few degrees warmer as he watched his friend’s mouth and hand. His arms and his breathing grew heavier, and everything was too much and too little all at once— the softness of Sonny’s hair under his fingertips, the scratchy upholstery beneath his bare ass, the hot, wet, insistence of Sonny’s mouth, the gentle rocking of the  _ Dance _ in the harbor, the lingering smell of red sauce, the almost-uncomfortable press of Sonny’s fingers into his flesh— he wanted it to be more, he wanted it to be different, he wanted it to be exactly what it was because it was perfect, he wanted it to be like it was those sweltering, dizzy nights in July. Sonny groaned, muffled as Tubbs thrust involuntarily into his mouth, and his eyelashes fluttered. Tubbs pulled him closer, a little too roughly, and in an instant he could feel Sonny swallowing against him as he came. 

Sonny sucked him through the aftershocks, and pulled away with none of his usual commentary. Just a brush of his thumb against his mouth, wet and sticky and red. He half-straddled Tubbs’ legs and tugged himself to conclusion, splattering his chest and hips with cum as Tubbs buried his face in Sonny’s shirt.

He looked almost sheepish for a moment, and then smiled, crooked and sly. 

“Sorry. Lemme get you a towel.” 

Tubbs’ heart thunked around in his chest like a loose tennis ball, the turnaround from orgasm to comedown to cleanup almost too rapid to process. He blinked stickly and looked down at his torso.

He had hoped they would take a little more time together.

Sonny leaned over and started blotting Tubbs off with a hand towel, launching immediately back into their dinnertime conversation. 

“To answer your question from earlier, no, we didn’t manage to get anything solid on his whereabouts that night.” He shrugged one shoulder, and talked as he tidied. “We  _ thought _ we had him on tape talking about refining coke, but the asshole was  _ literally _ in the business of making snow— he owned a ski lodge up in Colorado and had just bought some kind of industrial snow machine.” 

Tubbs buried the feeling that Sonny’s natter was an evasive tactic and just let himself be tickled by that statement. He chuckled as Sonny walked back into the bathroom and the water started running.

Almost yelling, Sonny continued, “I mean, we should have put it together considering the raw tonnage he was talking about, but who thinks about snow in Miami?” The sound of the faucet stopped. He left the bathroom with a package of Wet-Naps in his hand, offering the container out to Tubbs as he walked by. 

“Thanks,” Tubbs murmured, still a little fuzzy. He glanced up at Sonny, who was now at the kitchen sink. He tried to picture him, blonde hair and long eyelashes dusted with snow, investigating a drug-lord-cum-ski-czar on the side of a mountain in chilly Colorado, and found he couldn’t quite make the image stick. “You ever been skiing, Crockett?”

Back to Tubbs, flicking the water on, Sonny snorted. “I only do water when it’s wet, pal.”

Sonny was made for the sun. It was difficult to imagine him in cold weather gear, unless he was also swearing and muttering and blowing on his hands in distress. 

Filling whatever brief silence had begun, Sonny continued his story as he washed the dishes. “Anyway, turned out no one seemed to think Koslov was dealing drugs at all, but was actually manufacturing knockoff luxury bags n’ shit,” he sighed, placing one plate in the dish drainer. “So our case fell apart. He threatened to sue, we backed off.” He glanced backward over his shoulder at Tubbs. “We didn’t end up getting a break until months later when we had a string of arrests involving young women with coke in the heels of their sh—”

The sound of glass shattering against metal made Tubbs jump. 

“ _ Shit _ ,” Sonny spat, “Fucking— jesus fucking christ—”

Tubbs pulled his pants back up and sprang up from the couch. “You okay?” 

Sonny continued to curse and sputter, picked up the largest piece of the broken plate from the sink, and immediately dropped it with an even louder burst of profanity as blood started pouring down his fingers. 

“Jesus, Sonny,” Tubbs shouted, grabbing his partner by the wrist and pulling his hand up out of the sink. He turned down the water pressure on the faucet and tried to move his fingers under to rinse them. 

Sonny slapped him away with his other hand. “Get  _ off _ of me, will ya?” He held his bleeding palm in his other hand, staring at it instead of doing anything. “I don’t need you pawing me while I’m— fucking— jesus— god fucking  _ dammit!”  _ He looked down at his hands and the sink, fingers shaking slightly as he continued yelling profane nonsense. “I am so goddamn  _ stupid _ , I just— what the  _ fuck _ is wrong with me, I can’t hold on to a goddamn  _ plate _ and now there’s glass in the fucking sink and I—” 

Tubbs watched him, frozen, hands hovering in front of his body, as Sonny’s voice crept higher. 

“How the hell am I going to clean this up, it’s in a thousand fucking pieces—” He stared despondently at the sink, still bleeding, face scrunched up in a mask of horror. 

“Sonny, I can clean it up, you just go wash—”

“I don’t  _ want _ you to clean it up, it’s my goddamn fault and I— they won’t match anymore, the set is—” 

“It’s just a plate, man,” Tubbs hazarded. He put his hand on Sonny’s back.

Sonny crumpled, covering his mouth with his good hand as he choked back a sob. His other hand was shaking, dripping blood into the sink like a Pollock. He started gasping and his eyes ran red with tears. 

Tubbs took his hand once more and cleaned it off under the water, holding him around the waist as his shoulders shook. He grabbed a clean towel from the drawer next to the utensils and put it over the cut— nothing serious, just a bleeder— and tried not to think about the fact that Sonny was openly sobbing about having broken a plate. 

“I’m going to get neosporin.  _ Don’t _ touch any of the glass in the sink.” 

He ran into the bathroom and dug through the medicine cabinet at lightspeed. He probably shouldn’t have taken a tone of parental admonishment, but the man  _ had _ just tried to grab a handful of broken glass. 

When he returned to the kitchen, he dabbed Sonny’s hand dry and squeezed antibiotic cream onto his palm.

“Rico, I—” Sonny swallowed, face halfway between mortification and fury. His eyes softened as he watched Tubbs’ fingers sweep across his palm. “It’s my fault.” His nose wrinkled to one side and a drop that had been hanging from his chin fell onto the front of his shirt.

Tubbs looked at him out of the corners of his eyes.

“If I hadn’t suggested…” He swallowed, eyes crinkling. He wiped at them with the back of his other hand. It didn’t make the tears stop. Tubbs unwrapped a large bandage and stuck one edge to the outside of Sonny’s palm.

“I pushed him, Rico, I…” He choked, slowly shaking his head. “ _ I _ pushed him to do it.” 

Tubbs finished pressing down the edges of the bandaid, and then palmed Sonny’s cheek. He pulled away. Tubbs grabbed him around the middle, one hand on the back of his neck. He didn’t resist. 

There wasn’t anything he could say. If he told him he was wrong— that Zito made his own decisions, that he knew what he was signing up for when he became a cop— it would ring hollow. Because… he  _ wasn’t _ wrong, not entirely. If he told him everything was going to be okay, and tried to soothe him with meaningless pablum, it’d just be a lie. And if he agreed— if he admitted that there was a kernel of truth to Sonny’s guilt, even just to commiserate— he wasn’t sure what would happen, but it couldn’t be good for Sonny’s psyche.

So he just held on to him. 

Sonny sniffled quietly, arms limp at his sides. 

And then, at some point, Tubbs felt him breathe in deeply against his chest, and he stepped back, reasonably composed once more. He wiped his eyes with the edge of his sleeve and left for the bathroom.

Tubbs watched him, just for a moment, his innards cold gelatin. 

He went looking for a dustpan.

When Sonny reemerged, he had washed his face and straightened his clothes and readjusted his hair. The skin under his eyes was thin as cobwebs. 

He rolled his eyes self-consciously when he noticed Tubbs rinsing the last bit of blood and glass detritus down the drain.

“You don’t have to—” He stopped. “I was gonna clean it up.” 

“No worries, man. Took me all of a minute.” 

Sonny nodded, his cut hand stuffed awkwardly in his pocket. He rubbed the back of his neck with the other, breaking into an uneasy grin. “Sorry about that.” He laughed, an insincere bark. “Those meatballs must’ve been treated with that industrial cow estrogen or something.” He gave Tubbs a hollow-eyed smile.

Tubbs decided not to dignify that particular joke with a response. 

He blinked slowly, licking his lips as he formulated his thoughts. 

“Sonny…” He paused. “You’re  _ allowed _ to be upset.” 

“Yeah, well. Upset’s not the same as  _ weepy _ .” His mouth scrunched up to one side in disgust at the last word, like it had left a slimy residue on his tongue. He crossed his arms and sat back against the kitchen table. “I’m fine, Rico. It’s fine.”

He slowly shook his head from side to side, looking down at the floor, and switched the positions of his feet. 

“Thank you for cleaning up.” 

Tubbs nodded. “Y’know, I think I’ve seen those plates in some mail-order catalogue. If you’re really that bummed about the set getting split, we could always order you more.”

“Yeah, but then I’ll have seven of them, and that’s even worse than three.” He shrugged. “Not like I can really fit more than two guests at a time anyway.” His arms and shoulders were tight, and he kept swallowing, like he couldn't summon any saliva, after every few words.

After giving the sink one last wipedown, Tubbs leaned back against the counter top, arms crossed over his still-bare chest. 

He thought about a conversation he had had with Gina, raucously drunk after a multi-day stakeout on the outskirts of a tuna cannery. Crockett had taken a few days off in August, and Trudy had gone home with an exhausted admonishment to Gina to call her for a ride home later if she drank any more cocktails. She and Tubbs had proceeded to drink more cocktails. 

The two of them didn't spend a lot of time alone together, and the topic of conversation inevitably turned to Sonny. 

"Why didn't it work out between you two?" 

Gina had scrunched up her face in distress, clearly reluctant to speak on a topic she thought was over and done with. She didn't know— couldn't— that Tubbs' interest in the answer might skew a little personal. 

She finished the sip of her drink she had been taking. "Commitment, mainly." She shrugged. "I think he liked having me as a backup, y'know?" 

She pulled the backs of her fingers to her lips with a high pitched squeaking sound— a hiccup?— and apologized. "That sounds… harsher than I meant it. I guess what I mean is that… he wanted me to be an option. We'd end up together when he was having a hard time, or between girlfriends, but…" She sighed.

"That sounds pretty much like being a backup, yeah," Tubbs had nodded, feigning commiseration. He hadn't been the backup much recently— more like the main attraction. 

"I know you—" She blinked her eyes shut tightly and swallowed, probably trying to suppress another hiccup. "That he's your best friend, and you know I love him, too, so I'm not trying to throw him under the bus or anything, but he's just… he needs an escape hatch, and I guess I was just tired of it."

"It's not like you're talking shit about him, Gina." Tubbs shrugged. He had asked for her honesty.

"Rico, you can't say any of this to Sonny, okay?"

"What, and have to live with him sulking for weeks? Hell no."

"The thing is— you really can't say anything, I've only told Trudy this— the thing is, I was..." She paused, leaning her chin briefly on the back of her hand, eyes darting to the side. “I guess I wasn't as upset as I could have been, y'know, when we broke it off? Because it had sort of started to feel like I had to be his... not his conscience exactly, but... like I was always nudging him away from a cliff. Like all his problems had to be my problems, too, like I didn't have any of my  _ own _ shit going on." She sipped her drink, eyes on Tubbs' face. "Guess that's your job now."

At the time, Tubbs hadn’t really been lucid enough to determine how much subtext had been behind that implication, and trying to remember now what her tone had been like, the memory was clouded by a fog of boat drinks. 

“I guess I am,” he had laughed. “But that’s what your partner’s for, right?”

Gina tilted her head to the side, licking her lips as her eyes moved to the rim of her drink. “You really think I spend that much time worrying about my choice of words around Trudy?” Her lips quirked to one side. “You think  _ he _ spends that much time worrying about  _ you _ ?”

He hadn’t answered.

“Speaking of Trudy,” he had instead deflected, looking at his watch, “is it the witching hour yet? We gonna turn into pumpkins if we don’t get ourselves home soon?”

Gina snorted. “Trudy is an angel on Earth, and she would be here in double time if I called, which is exactly why I’m  _ not _ going to call her at, uh, whatever-o’-clock…” She had grabbed Tubbs’ wrist and looked at his watch, too. “Oh, jesus. Halfsies on a cab?” 

Now, watching Sonny, half-dressed, bandaged and disheveled, looking like he was one more bad day away from mandatory leave, everything she had said that night coated Tubbs’ brain like spiderwebs. 

He ached to reassure him, to convince him it was safe to just… be sad.

He licked his lips and hazarded the blandest of sympathies.

“It’s not the same without him.”

His arms crossed, and his chin tucked into his chest, Sonny watched Tubbs from under his eyelashes for a long time. His mouth was set in a firm, neutral line. He blinked once. Tubbs felt a little like he had wandered into a confession booth— and he wasn’t the priest. 

“Stan's not the same,” Sonny sighed, finally, uncrossing his arms and shrugging. “It’s not just that Zito’s gone. It’s that some part of Switek went with him.” He leaned his palms— first both, then with a wince, only one— back against the tabletop, looked down at the floor, and took a long, slow breath in. “He’s never gonna forgive me.” 

He looked up abruptly, with a quirk of his eyebrows— almost an eye roll. “Not that I blame the guy, since I killed his best friend.”

Tubbs sighed. “You didn’t kill Zito, Sonny, and saying you did—” 

“I just keep thinking: would I forgive him, if he did something that got you killed?” He walked over to the couch and slumped down. His tone was light and sharp, like broken glass. Like exposed teeth. “And then I think about what an asshole I am for making it  _ alllll _ about me, as always.” He turned and looked at Tubbs, ear pressed against the top of the couch’s backrest. “Anyway, what’s done is done, right?” He shrugged. “You got any plans this weekend?”

Whiplash ensued from Sonny’s whopping topic change. Tubbs had been thinking about calling Alicia, his current on-again-off-again, but if Sonny had plans, it’s not like his own were set in stone.

“I ask ‘cause this friend of mine’s got tickets to some music thing.” He shrugged. 

Tubbs started to reply in the affirmative, pleased and surprised that Sonny seemed to be asking him out. 

“I just figured,” Sonny interrupted him, “You might be interested. Have someone you might want to bring.” 

Metaphorically, Tubbs bit his tongue. Physically, he pursed his lips slightly and nodded. Maybe he would be calling Alicia after all. “How much?”

“He offered ‘em to me for $20 a piece, which I’m assuming is a good deal.”

Tubbs nodded a second time. “Sure, then, I’ll bite.” He tilted his head to the side slightly, smiling a little mischievously at Sonny. No harm in trying to get him on the same wavelength. “Assuming I can get a date.” 

Sonny shook his head, comically scrunching his face up. “You can always get a date, pal.” He was operating on a completely different radio frequency. 

He shot up from the couch as suddenly as he had sat down. “You want a drink? I’m gonna pour myself a drink.” 

Tubbs acquiesced to a drink, even though he was less than certain alcohol was the cure for Sonny’s troubles. “Sure, man. What are you pouring?”

Sonny reached into the cabinet above the fridge and pulled out a bottle of bourbon. He held it up, eyebrows cocked upwards on his forehead in question. 

Tubbs found himself nodding again. 

He found himself nodding a lot these days. When words were landmines, sometimes it was better just to stay out of the minefield altogether. 

As Sonny poured, he meandered to the couch and settled down. 

Sonny grabbed a bag of ice from the freezer and plopped two ice cubes each into short, faceted glasses. He measured out two fingers of bourbon into each glass and capped the bottle. 

“Let’s see if I can manage to walk these over without breaking any more glass,” he grinned, a cup in each hand. He placed one gingerly in Tubbs’ fingers and sidled up beside him on the couch. He touched the rim of his glass to Tubbs’ and lifted it in a toast, weakly proclaiming, “Nosdra… nazda…er, nosedrove…” He flattened his mouth slightly, smiling through his ruined attempt at a joke. “Nosferatu.” 

Tubbs’ chin folded in toward his chest and his eyes scrunched shut with laughter. He laughed hard enough that he had to put his drink down or risk sloshing it out the sides of the glass, and contagiously enough that Crockett joined in, even though the laugh was at his expense. 

“So we’re transitioning from Russian to vampires now, huh?” He teased, cheeks dimpled as he rescued his drink from the table.

“Close enough,” Sonny shrugged, laugh lines wrinkling. 

Forgetting himself for a moment, Tubbs turned his head and looked at his friend with too much fondness. Sonny didn’t blanche or tense up, thank god, but he couldn’t maintain eye contact. He looked down at the quickly dissipating ice in his drink and sighed. 

“You know,” he began, slowly, running a line in the condensation on the outside of his glass with his fingertip, “I propositioned him once.” 

The course of the conversation wasn’t quite clear enough for Tubbs to respond with anything other than confusion. 

“Nosferatu…?”

Sonny glanced at him silently, from the corner of his eye, tired and reproachful. 

Tubbs bit the inside of his cheek. “Sorry. Wasn’t thinking.”

He tried to convince himself that the sudden cold, hollow feeling he had at the top of his stomach, just below the diaphragm, wasn’t jealousy. Nothing quite said ‘healthy boundaries’ like being jealous of a dead man. 

And then suddenly the actual meaning of Sonny’s words hit him. 

“Wait,  _ what? _ ” 

“I know,” Sonny breathed, shaking his head slightly. The shadow of a smile played at the corners of his mouth. 

“You’re serious.”

“Yeah,” he nodded, slipping deeper into his southern drawl, almost more a ‘yep’ than a ‘yeah.’ “It was when his house burned down.”

“Jesus fucking christ.” Tubbs knew his mouth was open, but he couldn’t seem to get it to stay shut. What had he said to him,  _ ‘hey Lar, I’ve got a bed that’s not a pile of ashes?’ _

Shifting his legs slightly, Sonny looked at Tubbs from the corner of his eye, and sipped his bourbon. “I know, hardly gentlemanly of me.” He sighed. “He just seemed so damn hung up on Switek and his new romance and all that bullshit, I just…” 

“I’m… kind of surprised he’s your type.” _ Was _ your type. Tubbs stomach rolled, and he bit the inside of his lip to keep his traitor mouth shut.

“He’s not.” He looked up at the ceiling, eyes still noticeably red. “We were both just lonely, I guess, and I thought, hey, what the hell.” 

The thought that maybe Sonny made the same decision about him made Tubbs’ innards knot. Did he rate any higher than a ‘hey, what the hell?’ He had to, right? Even if it shouldn’t— couldn’t— matter? 

He violently derailed that train of thought. 

“What happened to Mr. ‘it’s stupid and dangerous to sleep with other guys at the precinct,’ huh?” 

“We didn’t actually do anything, Rico,” he half-chuckled, soft and a little sad. 

Sonny pursed his lips, taking a long, slow breath in through his nose. “I’ll be honest with you, I’m not even sure he knew I was hitting on him. Or if he did, he was very gracious about pretending he didn’t.”

He swallowed, brows furrowing. 

“If he  _ did _ know, the man was a saint. I mean, jesus, Rico, I spend years making jokes about him ‘n Stan, and then the moment I get alone with the guy, ‘surprise, turns out I was the squad pansy all along!’” He bit his lip, swallowing again. “I don’t think I ever once told him he was a good man. Or a good friend. And… all of it, from soup to nuts, is my. Goddamn. Fault.”

He turned to Tubbs, mouth flattened shut, eyes red-rimmed. He swallowed again, adam’s apple bobbing on a sea of inner turmoil. 

Tubbs tried to think of something, anything, to say. 

What  _ could _ be said? A good man— their friend— was dead. He didn’t need to be. And even if it wasn’t Sonny’s fault, Tubbs couldn’t see a day he would forgive himself for it.

Tubbs touched the back of his hand to Sonny’s knee, and then offered it to him palm-up. Sonny looked down at his hand for a moment like he didn’t know what to do, and then shifted his bourbon glass from his right hand to his left. He wiped his palm on his pant leg, and intertwined his fingers with Tubbs’. 

The pad of his thumb rubbing softly over the back of Sonny’s hand, Tubbs tried to recall if they had ever held hands before. He had a vague recollection of Sonny clasping his hand between his own in a hospital bed, but nothing of a more romantic inclination. Even now, it was a grounding gesture more than anything else. 

It was a long time before either of them moved to let go.

“Do you mind…” Sonny’s words caught in his throat, a noise somewhere between a  _ hrmmph  _ and a sigh. “Do you want to stay? Tonight?” 

Looking sheepish, he extricated his hand. 

“Might be nice to have the company.” His voice was half-sized, quiet, all the scratchiness gone out. 

Tubbs couldn’t decide if his asking for company was a good sign or a bad sign— either he was  _ actually _ coming to realize that isolation and repression weren’t workable solutions,  _ or _ he was feeling so low that he didn’t trust himself to be alone. He hoped it was the former, but suspected the latter. Either way, he had no intention of abandoning his partner.

“Of course.” 

And besides, it had been a while since he had last woken up in the bow of the  _ Vitus _ , folded into Sonny’s cramped bed, elbows and knees bumping. He kind of missed it.

Sonny downed the last of his bourbon, and held up his glass.

“Refill?”

“I’m good,” Tubbs gestured, indicating his own unfinished drink.

With a groan, Sonny stood up and went to refill his own glass anyway. As he poured, he glanced back. “Sometimes I feel like all I ever do is ask you for favors.” 

Tubbs felt his eyebrows crease. Something about the notion of his staying over being a ‘favor’ sat with him wrong. 

He  _ liked _ staying the night. 

Nevertheless, Tubbs smiled and waved it off. 

Sonny finished his drink, and they chatted, increasingly drowsy, until he declared himself 'ready to hit the hay.' In bed, he rolled into his side, back to Tubbs, and muttered a defeated goodnight.Tubbs did the same. 

The rocking of the  _ Dance _ and the belly full of bourbon lulled him to sleep, despite the static in his head.

He wasn't sure what time it was when he woke up, stirred by some noise outside, but it was still dark in the tiny, gently swaying bedroom. Sonny was pressed against him, face to face, arm clasped over his waist, legs entangled. Tubbs drowsily, absentmindedly kissed Sonny's cheek, just at the corner of his mouth. 

Sonny responded, brushing his lips against Tubbs', apparently awake. His hand crept up to Tubbs' cheek, fingertips warm and soft on his skin, and he captured his mouth with his own. 

They kissed, nose to nose in the dark, almost totally under the covers, and shifted closer, bellies pressed together, legs tightly entwined, arms wrapped around one another. Sonny's tongue pushed past Tubbs' lips, and Tubbs tilted his head to deepen the kiss. His temperature climbed, and he pressed his erection, fully awake before the rest of him, against Sonny's through their underwear. 

Hot and quiet, Tubbs found his fingers tangled in the hair at the back of Sonny’s neck. Sonny’s hand stayed soft on his cheek, lips and tongues and teeth together. The desperation from earlier seemed to have dissipated, replaced by a simmering insistence. A need, serious and sweet. 

Tubbs brushed the bridge of his nose against Sonny’s nose, and flicked his tongue over his lower lip. He could feel Sonny laugh silently, a soft exhalation against his skin. Sonny rubbed the backs of his fingers over Tubbs’ forehead, making furtive eye contact in the starlit black, and then pulled Tubbs in closer by the back of his neck, kissing him hard. His tongue slid sideways across Tubbs’, a deep and insistent pressure that Tubbs matched, craning into the kiss, hips matched with Sonny’s in a growing, smooth percussion. 

He released his fingers from Sonny’s hair and trailed them downward, sweeping over the back of his neck and his shoulderblades, circling his ribs, coming to rest on the hollow just above his hip. He squeezed, thumb tucking into the soft flesh just above Sonny’s briefs, in the crease where pelvis met thigh. Sonny’s hand on the back of his neck tightened, bruising their mouths together. Tubbs kissed the side of Sonny’s mouth, pulling away for just a second, the tips of their tongues brushing, and then moved back in, Sonny’s lips parting for him easily. He made a soft sound of pleasure against Tubbs’ mouth, and Tubbs hooked his fingers in Sonny’s waistband. 

Sonny did the same, and they shimmied out of their underwear for the second time tonight, bare erections pressed as quickly together as they were separated. Tubbs circled his fingers around Sonny’s length, soft and light, and ground up against him. He kissed a trail over Sonny’s stubbly cheek and chin, down to his neck, sucking just below his jawbone. Sonny’s hand found its way to Tubbs’ cock, and they stroked each other in tandem, chest to chest, mouth to mouth or neck or ear. 

As Tubbs thrust into the increasing heat and tension of Sonny’s hand, Sonny sucked his lower lip, gently dragging his teeth over it. Tubbs gasped, just a little. Sonny stroked him, rhythm increasing little by little, and pressed their tongues together once more. Tubbs kept pace with him, and quickly found his thighs tensing and his buttocks clenching; each time Sonny licked against his lips or plunged his tongue inside his mouth in time with his hand on his cock, he tipped closer to coming. He felt Sonny shiver against him, and picked up his own pace.

He came quickly, with Sonny’s mouth on his own, his muffled groans giving way to Sonny thrusting erratically into his hand, cum splattering onto his stomach and Sonny’s. Nose to nose, their kissing slowed, and the rocking of their hips along with it. 

Sonny laughed again, still quiet and breathy, and then rolled halfway onto his back to reach onto the bedside table. He grabbed tissues and cleaned them both up, looking a little sheepish in the grey-blue light of the window. He touched the tip of his nose to the tip of Tubbs’ nose and brushed their lips together very softly, and then muttered, “If you can see the clock, please don’t tell me what time it is.”

Tubbs snorted, and kissed Sonny’s cheek, hard. “Late.”

Sonny made a noise halfway between a grumble and a chuckle, and then rolled onto his other side. He reached behind himself and grabbed Tubbs’ hand, placing it on his side. Tubbs took this as an invitation to spoon, curling up against his partner’s bare back. 

“‘Night, Rico.” Sonny interlaced their fingers, resting together in the space just in front of his ribs.

“G’night, Sonny.”

There were other things he wanted to say, but he suspected very strongly that he would regret them in the light of day. So instead, he buried his face in Sonny’s hair, and dozed off, effortlessly and dreamlessly. The next time Tubbs opened his eyes, it was morning.

He groped around blindly for Sonny in the bed, finding only cool covers beside him, and a hint of fresh coffee in the air. He sat up, blinking the stickiness out of his eyes. He scratched his chest and yawned, and then looked down at his torso. 

He should probably take a shower before they left.

Tubbs went looking for his underwear, lost somewhere in the sheets, and rolled himself out of the bed to slip them back on. He grabbed his undershirt from the floor and meandered into the kitchen.

“Morning.” He leaned sleepily against the doorframe. 

Sonny handed him a perfectly-prepared cup of coffee and smiled, a drowsy but honest smirk. 

Say what you would about Sonny, he  _ was _ always a gentleman. 

“Sleep okay?” 

Tubbs snorted, and Sonny looked away, mischief in his eyes and the corners of his mouth. 

Sipping his coffee, Tubbs watched Sonny pour himself what he suspected was a second cup. “Mind if I use the shower?”

“Go for it.” He gestured to his hair, clearly wet. “I’m done in there.” 

They drank their coffee in relative quiet.

The rest of the day passed in relative quiet, too. 

Sonny was contemplative, muted; he spent the day listening and watching, internal and slightly withdrawn. Tubbs found himself increasingly nervous. Usually a silent Sonny meant something distressing was brewing. 

But nothing seemed to come of it, and by the end of the week he was surprisingly chipper. 

On Friday afternoon, Sonny elbowed Tubbs at the door to the conference room. “Any interest in making dinner a double date?” 

Tubbs took a moment in processing this request. At some point, he had told Sonny that before the show tonight, he and Alicia were planning on getting dinner, but the discussion had gone out of his mind with the case they were working on. Blinking back into the present time, he nodded.

“Sure. New girlfriend?”

“New-ish.” Sonny smiled, conspiratorial and soft. 

Tubbs watched him from the corner of his eye as they walked back to their desks. He wondered if he had already been dating this chick the night they had gone to Nicoletta’s. Not that they had never fooled around when one or the other had been in an on-again-off again or casual relationship with a woman (in fact, there had been some rather mutual fooling around with some of those women), but Sonny’s face… Well, his face said he really  _ liked _ this girl. 

A lot.

“She’s a doctor,” Sonny explained, almost apologetically. “So I’ve mostly only been seeing her nights, but she’s off this evening.” The corner of his mouth quirked up, his eyes warm on Tubbs’ face. “I thought maybe, y’know, if we wouldn’t be third and fourth wheels, it’d be a good opportunity for all of us to meet up.”

“Sure,” Tubbs nodded, not knowing how to say anything but yes to this. 

Sonny grinned. “Great!” His eyelashes fanned together, and the dimples in his cheeks deepened. “Rico, she’s really something, y’know? I really think you’re going to like her,” he insisted. He was glowing.

Tubbs bit the inside of his lip. His partner’s happiness felt like a chip in ceramic. A hairline crack that hadn’t started leaking yet. 

He swallowed, and smiled, dazzling white.

“I’m sure I will, Sonny.”

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, yeah, this was mean. 
> 
> The apparent tension between Crockett and Tubbs in season 3, in comparison to their relative ease in season 2-- coupled with their continuing immense concern for one another-- seems like something that maybe, just maybe, comes from the fact that both of them are way more into one another than they think they ought to be. There's no way in hell Sonny sees any possibility of a future for himself with Tubbs, and no way Tubbs sees Crockett as anything other than casually interested in him, and thaaaaaat's depressing. 
> 
> Just gotta bone and be sad and then pretend you're totally heterosexual, right?
> 
> Right?
> 
> UPDATE: Vice fans, please feel free to come talk on the [Miami Vice Discord Server](https://discord.gg/79mQP7DmUd)! I look forward to being yelled at for making Sonny cry about plates.


End file.
